


Touch of Fate

by lossie



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 22:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13820955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lossie/pseuds/lossie
Summary: "Maybe it was terribly pragmatic of her to be so patient when so many people spent their entire lives in a frantic pursuit of eternal happiness, but at the same time she thought it was a bit romantic to calmly expect the unexpected with a smile and an open heart." AU set right after Kakashi loses his Sharingan. Rated T just in case.





	Touch of Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, guys. This story is a product of me trying to get back to writing. I think I actually did a pretty good job, considering I haven't written any fiction in almost 2 years. Either way, I will be definitely posting more stories soon, since I'm in a very intense Naruto phase right now. I kind of ship a lot different pairings, so don't be surprised if I end up posting something other than my favourite OTP of all time (aka kakasaku). I hope you won't mind too much. Enjoy and please, don't forget to review! I really love hearing from you!

Sakura was never particularly worried about meeting her soulmate. It would happen when it was meant to happen and that was it, as far as she was concerned. She had no expectations for an instant love story, because such things were simply unrealistic, and she didn’t even care all that much who her soulmate was or where they were from as long as they would promise to never hurt her. All she ever wanted was a stable relationship based on trust as well as destiny, something similar to what her parents had.  
  
Growing up, she always admired how seamlessly they seemed to fit together, a true embodiment of two halves becoming a perfect whole. Her father, a silly man by nature and an elite genjutsu specialist, had been completely smitten with Sakura’s mother, a civilian from Uzushino, from the moment he met her. They were a fairytale come true in the best way possible, because they were effortless in their devotion to each other. Sakura wanted to one day experience the same type of love and yet she vowed she would not try to rush things. Timing was something better left to the powers that be. Maybe it was terribly pragmatic of her to be so patient when so many people spent their entire lives in a frantic pursuit of eternal happiness, but at the same time she thought it was a bit romantic to calmly expect the unexpected with a smile and an open heart.  
  
Years went by and, for the most part, Sakura remained steadfast in her convictions. True, she had fancied herself in love with Sasuke for a while, but those feelings went away when she discovered by accident that they were not meant to be. No matter how much she wished to offer him a brief respite from pain, she was not meant to offer it. In the end, their friendship, however strained and fractured it has always been, was better for it. She was back to her self-imposed vigil in no time, any traces of her unfortunate infatuation seemingly gone for good. The Uchiha left not long after they finally started to be friends for real. Although his departure had hurt her, Sakura was certain they would meet again one day and maybe this clearer understanding of where they stood in terms of their relationship would make it easier to somehow coerce him to come back.  
  
It didn’t necessarily work out this way, but Sakura wasn’t bothered by it as much as she probably should have been. Sasuke needed to achieve his goal. This single-mindedness was going to be either his undoing or a blessing in disguise. Sometimes she wished they had been soulmates, just so she could have had a reason to follow him; to help and support him in any way she could without feeling as if she was somehow breaking a sacred law. She didn’t want to forget about her soulmate – couldn’t, even if she tried – but bonds between teammates and the sort of familial love she has developed over the years for both Naruto and Sasuke were incredibly hard to ignore. Ino often told her that she was needlessly torturing herself with those what-ifs and could-have-beens, and that she had to stop doing this to herself.  
  
“It’s not healthy,” she would say next with a sigh, as if she understood Sakura’s inner conflict. “You might be a medic, but you are not responsible for healing the entire world.”  
  
Of course it wasn’t that easy. Love was too complex to be properly defined or understood in simple terms. It was impossible to forget it, impractical to even try to fight it, and downright stupid to resist it. For a long time Sakura thought she would only ever love her family and then eventually her soulmate. To discover that there were so many different ways in which you could love someone – and so many ways in which this love could break you – made her head spin.  
  
The outbreak of war made her temporarily forget about her inner turmoil.  
  
The trepidation of the upcoming battles was mixed with nervous excitement of as of yet unexplored possibilities. Shinobi from all corners of the world didn’t have the opportunity to mingle freely in a somewhat peaceful environment all that often. It was good for the morale of the troops when people started to meet their soulmates left and right. Sakura was happy for all the lucky couples, especially for her friends, even if her joyous mood was tainted by bitterness over her own as of yet unsuccessful search. She made it a point to touch her patients with no chakra before starting to heal them in order to check if they would turn out to be her destined other half. Those few seconds before skin touched skin were filled with the sort of nervousness poems were written about. Butterflies in the stomach, fluttering of the heart, heat rushing to her cheeks. It felt wonderful to experience something so pure when there seemed to be nothing pure left in the world. Surprisingly enough, war taught Sakura how to hope. It showed her lingering naiveté, if not a sliver of desperation, but she couldn’t really help it. At this point she was no longer satisfied with waiting and the more brutal the war became, the more determined she was to find her soulmate. Playing witness to so much death and suffering jaded a person beyond belief. At the age of seventeen, Sakura felt decades older, weathered down by the hardships of seemingly never-ending conflict, with the blood of all those she failed to save staining her hands and soul.  
  
She had almost given up that tentative flicker of hope still present in her heart by the time they actually met.  
  
To be honest, she should have expected for the meeting to happen like it was always meant to happen – unexpectedly. Still, the first time she ever touched Kakashi bare skin to bare skin and felt something deep within her click into place like a long-lost puzzle piece was a bit of a surprise. The way he looked at her, his remaining eye wide, proved that he had been expecting this revelation about just as much as she did, which was not at all. To say that discovering your soulmate has apparently always been within arm’s reach was kind of bizarre and a bit annoying was an understatement of the century.    
  
Somewhere in the back of her mind Sakura was vaguely aware that she should have started to examine Kakashi by now or at least tried to alleviate his pain. Unfortunately, she couldn’t really focus on anything other than looking at him in breathless wonder as if she was seeing him for the very first time, which was, in a sense, kind of true. It was common knowledge that touching your soulmate was a heady sensation unlike any other, but to hear about it was vastly different than experiencing it firsthand.  
  
“Wow,” she whispered, her hands still pressed against his face as if they had been glued there.  
  
For his part Kakashi didn’t seem to mind her close proximity as much as she expected him to. Then again, the pull of their still very fresh soul bond was undeniable and almost impossible to resist.  
  
“Let me try, Sakura-chan!”  
  
The sound of Naruto’s voice startled her and made her jump. She has been so caught up in all things Kakashi that she didn’t even notice when he showed up. With a sliver of disappointment she moved to the side to make space for him and Naruto reached out to put his hand over Kakashi’s face in order to heal the damage left behind by Madara, but he stopped mid-motion and simply started at the man with his mouth hanging open in obvious shock.  
  
At first she couldn’t understand what was wrong with him, because there was little to warrant such an extreme reaction, but then she noticed that Kakashi now had two matching eyes instead of one and she kind of got it. Growing back a missing eyeball could probably shock someone speechless.  
  
“Naruto, how did you...?” She started to ask before she realized that Naruto didn’t even touch Kakashi. It wasn’t him who preformed this miracle. “Did I just...?” It must have been _her_.  
  
“Don’t look so surprised,” Sasuke said from somewhere to her right. Even though she couldn’t see his face, because she was too busy staring at the rest of Team 7 to look up at him, she was fairly certain he was rolling his eyes at her in exasperation, which made her hand itch to slap him.  
  
“Well, excuse you, but I have never managed to regrow a body part before.”  
  
Her snide reply was met with a snort of amusement as if he couldn’t quite believe that she was telling the truth. Not that Sakura cared about what he thought all that much to begin with.  
  
“B-but how...?” Naruto muttered mostly to himself as he looked between Sakura and Kakashi with eyes the size of saucers.  
  
“Apparently we are soulmates,” Kakashi informed him with a noncommittal shrug and a side-long glance in Sakura’s direction.  
  
Surprisingly enough, the news made Naruto laugh. “Wow! That’s so cool! Congrats, you guys!”  
  
This time when Sasuke rolled his eyes, Sakura was actually able to see it happen. “Yes, yes. As fantastic as it is, we still have some unfinished business to attend to.”  
  
Unfortunately, he was right. Sakura was strongly inclined to bemoan that the one time her hands-on approach to finding her soulmate actually worked it had to happen in the middle of a battlefield. As if it couldn’t have happened before all the shit hit the proverbial fan! No, of course it couldn’t, because that would have been way too easy and convenient.  
  
Shortly afterwards they were forcefully pulled back into the mêlée, but Sakura couldn’t really focus all of her attention on the battle. Her eyes would stray to Kakashi, tracing his movements in order to make sure that he was alright and she was pretty sure that he was doing exactly the same thing. Every time they touched, they would hold onto each other for as long as possible, suddenly overwhelmed with the idea that it could be the last chance to do so. Assisting Obito in finding Sasuke and, subsequently, leaving Kakashi behind, was one of the most emotionally taxing experiences in her entire life. The mere thought that she could come back and find him dead made her heart clench painfully and her breath hitch. It would have been cruel to realize who he was to her after all these years only to lose him immediately afterwards.  
  
They saved each other in more ways than one within the span of the next few hours. It was not only the matter of survival anymore, but also the promise of a hopefully much brighter future that finally managed to secure their victory. When Sasuke and Naruto - bruised and bloodied, but thankfully alive – joined their hands and released the Infinite Tsukyomi, Sakura all but collapsed against Kakashi in sheer relief.  
  
As he gathered her in his arms and pressed a gentle, fleeting kiss against her temple, Sakura let herself enjoy the beginning of her own happy ending in the arms of the man she knew she could love and trust with all her heart and soul.

**Author's Note:**

> By the way I posted a sketch for this story on my tumblr (lossie92). Feel free to check it out!


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